Participants:
| Scene Title | A Special Case |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Kelly's waiting for Reuben after he finishes his show. She calls him odd, he dubs her "snake woman". |
| Date | October 22, 2010 |
Radio Station and Oh So Sweet
The clock on the wall of the small DJ booth in Studio K slowly turns to 5:45am, causing a number of nationwide stations to switch from their regular live programming to a syndicated feed from The Big Apple. For a brief second, there's absolute silence. Then a roll of drums that is quickly joined by synthetic-sounding trumpets softly touting a tuneful tune. After that, the dub beat joins the drums and trumpets as Gigi d'Agostino's cover of "The Riddle" begins to play.
In the studio, a grown man wiggles his hips and pumps his fists to the eurodance song that was red hot for three weeks, ten years previously. Reuben "Revolting Rooster" Spencer is alone in the studio today, owing to the fact that Kristen was busy with her other obligations and also that Reuben had blocked all the doors into this part of the studio building with strategically-placed chairs against doorknobs.
At nearly five minutes, the song winds down. Deciding to actually do the show right for once, he queues up the commands to have the pre-recorded announcer voice play as well as get some good background music laid out.
"It's 5:45 in the ayy-emm! Live from New York City, it's Revolting Rooster and Friends!"
Hastily, Reuben sits down and puts on his best nonchalant voice. "Yeah, welcome, welcome to the, uh… the show," Reuben says as he scratches his head, brushing back some of his long brown hair and pushing his green tinted glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. "You are either streaming, torrenting or listening to the Revolting Rooster and Friends show! I, of course, am Rooster once again filling in for DJ Kenny Clean who is currently searching for Falcon Heene above the Nevada wasteland. We wish him the best in his exercise in futility."
A pause as Reuben shifted the music from one window on his computer to yet another. "Now, I'd like to open up the floor… well, desk, rather, to discussion about recent goings on. A recent news release regarding the October 12th earthquake in Central Park states that the damage is still being catalogued and a clean-up procedure is well on its way, says city officials. Now, before I unhinge the floodgates and let you attention-hungry stinkchildren onto the air, we need our call-in music."
Reuben's fingers skillfully manipulate the plastic ovoid mouse across its pad, selecting "The Universal" by Blur. As the soft and lilting sound of Graham Coxon's guitar begin to pump outwards over the airwaves, he slowly turns down the volume as well as the lights in the booth. "Now that we've got the proper atmosphere," he says with a sultry tone to his voice, "let's see what you, New York, have to say about this… not so natural phenomenon."
«Yeah, hi? Uhm, this is Braden from Queens!»
"Welcome to the show, Brady-wady. What do you think of the earthquake?"
«Yeah, man, it was so f-eep!-ng loud and… wait, whoa, what?»
"Train of thought derailed already, did it?"
«No, man! You f-eep!-ng bleeped me… there, you did it again!»
"Sure did, Braden Banana-fanna-foe-faden. Now, tell me, do you actually have anything to say about the earthquake?"
«F-eep! Sh-eep!» the man on the other end of the line laughs «Dude, you gotta try this sh-eep! out!»
With his middle finger, Reuben disconnects the call. A melodramatic sigh. "Kids, don't mix DayQuil and NyQuil. It's just not cricket. Okay, next caller, you're on the line with Revolting Rooster."
«Uhm, hi, this is Aeryn.»
"Yeah, I don't care," Reuben says with a dismissive wave of his hand. "What do you think about the earthquake, Aeryn?"
«Well, I heard from a girl that I work with that this guy she's dating knows somebody who works in city planning. She says that this thing is going to set the city back even MORE in reconstruction costs. I think it's terrorism.»
"Don't be so quick to go screaming the T-word Aeryn. Unless you're screaming tacos because, well…" Reuben quickly hit a button that played the Robot Chicken quote that was still popular to this day. "Tacos rule!"
«Well, I mean, just THINK about it. We already had that bomb go off and THAT was a terrorist act.»
"Says who, exactly?"
«The news! People that were there!»
"Yeah, pumpkin, the people that were there are now lining the sidewalks as grit. Tell you what, thanks for the input and call back again tomorrow when we discuss the New York Taco Shortage," Reuben says as he disconnects the line again.
"Alright, let's take eight more calls to satisfy my obsessive-compulsive disorder and then we'll move onto some music that none of you Beiber-bots have ever heard. Caller, you're on the line and for the love of Buddha, you better have a damned brain in that hollowed out space three feet above your ass."
~*~*~
Later…
~*~*~
The numbers on Reuben's iPhone read 11:04am as he steps out of the Studio K building and stretches his arms. Everywhere around him, people walk and chat in varying states of dress and contentment. Wrapping his jacket a little tighter around his frame, he finds himself walking towards Oh So Sweet once more.
He doesn't get far before he sees a familiar face, however. While Kelly hasn't had much interaction with her sister since the two were reunited, she found herself curious about Kristen's work. And perhaps even a little curious about the man whose show Kristen produces. It's a normal thing, given their previous meeting, at least for normal people. Kelly, however, isn't quite normal.
She's leaning against the wall at the end of the building, one foot propped up on the wall, hands tucked in the pockets of her leather jacket. A single earbud snakes up from her pocket to her ear. "You don't get a lot of intelligent people calling in to your show, do you?" she asks, head tilting as she considers him.
Stopping dead in his tracks and looking over at the woman with a considering(see: apprehensive) gaze, he shrugs. "Mostly college kids who spend most of the day whacking off to pictures of women like you," he says with a slight smirk. "Still, I'm negotiating for a late afternoon slot, so maybe people will be more intelligent after they've had a chance to wake up, have their unhealthy breakfasts and slap their kids around."
"So, do you always listen to the radio shows of your one-morning stands, or am I just a special case?"
"Special case," Kelly says with a shrug. "After all, my sister is producing your show, so I figured I would listen in, see what the deal was. And I was curious. Now I've listened, so I know what the show's about." She pushes away from the wall. "Heading to post-show breakfast again?"
"Yeah, I thought I might grab another cup of Grey and try to eat something with not so much sugar in it," he says with a yawn. For a man who was running on two hours of sleep, he was actually feeling quite good. His clothes were more or less neat and his face with lineless. His hair was a little tousled, but that was how he chose to wear it these days to begin with. "I'm sure you're going to anyways, since I'm the special one here, but why don't you join me? You can tell me how wonderful my choice in music was as well as how bad my listeners are."
"I had planned on it," Kelly admits with a nod, and moves to fall into step with him. "I'm pretty indifferent on your music though. I don't listen to much. Classical mostly, which I didn't hear you play any of. Most everything else is just noise to me. But yes, the listeners were pretty damn stupid. Earthquakes in a park are hardly terrorism. If someone wanted to cause an earthquake to cause terror, they would've done it in the city proper where it would do real damage and likely kill people."
"Kids these days are like minah birds," Reuben says without looking over at Kelly, "They pick up a sound that they like to hear and repeat it over and over again until they're bored with it. Swearing, talking about sex, throwing around the word terrorism like we're in the Bush Years again, it's all popular culture. I'm willing to bet you that the girl's a straight A student in class but the moment you ask her about philosophy, metaphysics or even theology on a base level, she's looking at you like a cow looks at an oncoming train."
"Besides, I like to play music in the morning that fits the theme of the show. If I dropped Rachmaninoff in with Jay-Zeezer and Muse, it breaks the flow. Still, I'm partial to Carl Orff, Chopin and Uematsu when the mood strikes. Other than that, I like anything with a tune and lyrics that weren't written by a tone-deaf dipshit whose wardrobe is worth more than my annual salary."
One brow lifts as Kelly listens to him, and she glances over. "You're probably right. Schools focus on the physical, and parents don't teach much in the way of religion anymore, so that's what kids know and understand. And I know you're right about kids just being part of the herd. It's pathetic, really." This is clearly not a woman with a strong maternal streak. "I'm surprised though. I wouldn't have expected you to listen to Chopin. You seem more…mmm…Rolling Stones, I think."
"Three words: fuck Mick Jagger," he says simply. "Stones doesn't really have the atmosphere that I like in music. I can get into the Sex Pistols or Public Image Ltd. before I get into them. Although, I'm not impervious to trends and hooplah that such figures have following them. I went through a phase where I tried sleeping upside down. I had it on good authority that sleeping like that was the sole reason that Keith Richards could not be killed by conventional weapons." He lets that hang in the air for a few seconds before continuing
"As for Chopin, I haven't listened to the stuff in a long time. I started getting into the classical stuff from watching Ren and Stimpy, since they had a lot of classical tunes playing as background music. It was good stuff, though." As they near the sweets shoppe, Reuben opens the door. "Snake women first."
Kelly sighs softly. "I am forever to be branded by snakes," she says, shaking her head and walking into the shop. "You're an odd man though, Reuben. You're aware of this, right? Sleeping upside down? Classical music from an absolutely retarded cartoon? Are there any other quirks that you want to tell me about now? Or perhaps Kristen? Does she know that you're so odd?" she asks, moving to a table and sitting down
Reuben's jaw drops, giving a hugely dramatic gasp. "Ren and Stimpy was the cornerstone of Nickelodeon animation before they decided to turn into Disney 2.0," he says, sitting down across from her. "Besides, if I wasn't odd, I wouldn't get a radio show. You can't be like… sand on wheat toast and be a radio personality. You've gotta be like… a bowl of milk with sweet tarts floating in it."
He picked up a menu and outlined what he wanted. "So, what, you only nail boring people, or do you just never take notice of them?"
"No, I sleep with people who are attractive and interest me," Kelly says as she picks up a menu as well. "You fit the bill, and I wanted sex, so I had sex." She glances up to him and there's a ghost of a smile on her lips. "Do you only nail people who think you odd, or do you have a thing for snake women?"
"I enjoy a catch-as-catch-can approach at sex. You're a stunning woman and you're also disease-free, which is definitely a plus," he said, putting the menu down and taking a sip of water after the waitress brought the two of them a pair of dew-covered glasses.
"What can I get you two today?" asked the waitress with a tired, yet wide smile.
"I'll have a cinnamon-apple muffin, a cup of Earl Grey tea-no milk, one sugar-,and some of those hothouse strawberries," he says, handing his menu over. The waitress then turns to the woman sitting across from the so-called 'odd' one.
"A cup of coffee, black, and a blueberry muffin," Kelly tells the waitress, offering her menu as well before she looks back to Reuben. "And the fact that I'm your producer's sister? You even said yourself the other morning that it wasn't something most people would do. Though I applaud you not worrying about it, since I can handle my sister well enough."
A shrug. Reuben sways a little in his seat as if feeling a rhythm that was altogether invisible and varying. "She hasn't fired me yet for it, though I did bar the doors in the studio this morning to make sure she couldn't get in. I even took the battery out of my cellphone," he said with a slow smirk.
"It's not as if we were all weird about it afterwards, anyways. We went to your place, we had slithery, snakey sex, I had a shower and a sammich, then I left. You gotta tell me where you get your salami, by the way. That stuff is definitely deli-grade," he said, smiling to the waitress when she brought the meal over to the two of them.
"Probably because I bought it at a deli," Kelly says dryly, though with another of her tiny smiles. "I keep sandwich stuff on hand for when I don't feel like waiting for room service." Ahh, the joys of living in a hotel. And being lazy. "Did you really bar the doors to the studio, thinking she'd try to yell at you or something?" she asks, head tilting. "And there's no reason to get weird about sex. It's natural. Everyone does it. You get weird about it, you don't get it, and all the fun is gone."
She picks up her coffee, sipping at it while considering him. "Speaking of, you're welcome to drop by sometime if you want a repeat."
Nodding, Reuben gave Kelly a thumbs up at the proposal. "Up for a round after brekkie if you are. And yeah, I did bar the doors, mainly because there were a lot of chairs and a lot of doors and I was up earlier than usual, so I got bored." He pulled his muffin apart and began to spread honey butter across the insides of the toasty pastry. "See, the world needs more women like you. Self-assured, self-supporting and not needing somebody else to validate your own existence. That's pretty admirable and also very rare."
"I am," Kelly says with a nod. "And I suppose that's a good reason as any to bar the doors. It sounds like you need a hobby though, if that's your choice of how to relieve boredom." Coffee is set down, the muffin replacing it in her focus. "The world needs more people who are self-assured, though I guess that would also make my job harder. People who are convinced that they can succeed are more likely to cause trouble than people who think they'll fail. If you take desperation out of the equation, anyway."
"Desperation, right," he says with his mouth almost full. "I think that if you took despiration out of the equation, we wouldn't be human anymore. We'd be machines that are only a fraction smarter than R2-D2 or Asimo." He takes another bite out of the muffin and chewed thoughtfully, looking around. After swallowing, he picked up the other half of the muffin and pointed at Kelly with it. "I think you'd find more interest in your job if people were more like machines and less like humans… but then again, machines are more predictable. And squeaky and hentai-ish."
"Very odd," Kelly murmurs with a shake of her head. "If people were machine-like there wouldn't be much reason to work security. So I guess it's good that human nature is what it is. I rather like being employed rather than living on the street somewhere." And she knows that for a fact, sadly enough. "I know who R2-D2 is, but who's Asimo?" she asks curiously.
"Asimo," Reuben says with a quirk of his eyebrow. "That Honda robot that falls over more than Lindsay Lohan during a sobriety test? I'm sure you've seen the YouTube videos, right? Come on, he's practically a meme by himself.
"I'm not sure how Kristen would feel if she knew that we bumped uglies after breakfast two days ago… you might wanna be the one to tell her, since you can probably be more blunt and unexpected than I in that respect."
"Can't say I watch YouTube videos," Kelly says with a shrug. "I'll look later though, just to see what he is. But why would I tell Kristen? It's none of her business. I certainly don't ask her who she sleeps with, nor do I care so long as they don't hurt her. And if that happened, I'm sure she'd tell me without me having to ask."
"You seem… really intent on keeping that woman safe from harm, you know that? It's like you're Batman and she's Gotham City," he says, holding her gaze as he finishes his tea. "I'm not gonna ask why, and I'm not gonna tell her anything myself. If she finds out, she finds out. If she gets upset, she'll get upset… though I'm not sure why she would. Still, if you're cool with keeping her in the Ray Charles position about that whole thing, I can dig it."
Shortly after that, he finished his muffin. "Remind me to get the name of that deli you go to before I leave your place again, if you'd do me the honor and awkwardness of buying thick logs of meat at the same store you do."
Kelly shrugs again. "She's my sister. I don't give a damn about most people unless they're paying me money to protect them, but she's blood. Anyone who wants to hurt her has to go through me first. It's just the way things are. I'm sure most sisters or brothers do the same. Aren't you that way with your siblings, if you have any?" She finishes her muffin and leans back. "I don't care if you go to the same deli I do. It's not like you're asking to dress the same way I do or anything. I'll get you the address later."
"Yeah, yeah, it's called a joke, Baroness," he quips as he lays down the payment for his meal as well as the tip. "I don't have any brothers or sisters. I was raised a selfish only child," he says, moving to stand and waving to the waitress while gesturing to the money. The waitress gives another tired smile back and a wave. As if feeling her fatigue, Reuben yawns wide and stretches his arms. "Christ, I need to get a later schedule on my show. This morning stuff is killing me."
That prompts one more tiny smile from Kelly. "Does that mean you won't be coming back to my place for an after-breakfast dessert?" Did she just…tease him? It certainly sounds like it! She tosses down money for her own food and stands. "I'm sure though, between you and Kristen, that you can manage a later show soon. Or you could just sleep half the day away. At least until you get the schedule change."
"Nah, I sleep better after a good hard workout," he says, completely missing the tiny shadow of a smile that she offered him. "We'll pitch the show to the afternoon crowd, see how they like it. We'll have less college students, I know that much. They'll all be asleep at that point."
Stepping out into the cold morning, Reuben feels an unexpected sense of deja vu settling down upon him. "Looks like it might snow. Good thing I don't drive, I'd have to dig my car out."
"I really hope it doesn't. I got enough of snow during that month long blizzard back in the spring," Kelly says, shaking her head. "You're right though. Sleep does come easier, and better, after a good workout," she says, following him out into the cool Autumn air. "It's also good for warming chilled bodies after a walk in weather like this," she adds, zipping up her jacket and slipping hands into her pockets. "Cab? We're just far enough away that we'll be uncomfortable by the time we get to the Corinthian."
A nod. "Yeah, I'll spring, since it's barely a hop, skip, jump and cab ride away," he said, moving to flag one down. "Just promise me that this time, you won't bring that snake of yours to bed. I thought it was you at one point and very nearly broke one of the cardinal rules of the heterosexual male."
"I didn't bring the snake to bed," Kelly says tightly. "I never bring the snake to bed," she says, moving towards the cab when it pulls over. "It's not my fault if he sometimes gets out at inconvenient moments," she adds before sliding into the cab. "Though if it bothers you, we can always go to your place instead."
A brief shake of his head. "No, I think your place with the full-sized bed and walls that aren't toilet paper thin is a better venue. Besides, I barely like sleeping there, much less attempting to sleep with someone there. Your place is fine, I just have to watch out for scales."
He smirked languidly at her as he slipped into the back seat with her and shut the door. "The Corinthian, please."